


one fire burns out another's burning

by Carmarthen



Category: Romeo And Juliet - All Media Types, Rómeó és Júlia (Színház)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Backstory, Character Study, Epilepsy, F/M, Fire, Gen, Incest, Tybalt is fucked in the head
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-21
Updated: 2013-09-21
Packaged: 2017-12-27 04:53:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/974566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmarthen/pseuds/Carmarthen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tybalt and his complicated relationship with fire. See notes for additional warnings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	one fire burns out another's burning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [drcalvin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/drcalvin/gifts).



> drcalvin asked for three sentences on Tybalt's unhealthy fascination with fire. I wrote 1180 words or so. Oops?
> 
> This is largely based on the proshot cast, but I was experimenting with an older, more bitter Tybalt, partially based on a bootleg of unknown date and partially on calvin's notes on the ball scene as performed in 2013.
> 
> I'M SORRY EVERYTHING TYBALT I WRITE IS SO SAD I SWEAR I'LL MANAGE TO MAKE HIM HAPPY SOMEDAY.
> 
>  **Note:** While I tagged for incest, all the Tybalt/Lady Capulet and Tybalt/Julia here is one-sided and pretty subtextual, no more present than canon and possibly less. Tybalt's epilepsy is also a minor, non-explicit element of this story. I don't really think anything Tybalt does here qualifies as self-harm, but there's at least as much ill-advised playing with fire as in canon, so I guess proceed with caution if any of these things are potentially triggering for you.

"If you look into the heart of the fire," Julia whispered, nestling against his side, warm and trusting, "you can see a salamander. Look—curled up there, just under that log."

Tybalt looked, staring until his eyes watered, but all he saw was the blue lick of flame around the edges of blackened logs, orange and gold dancing and leaping against the night, sparks scattering upwards to fade into ash that fell like snow, dusting the shoulders of his doublet and graying Julia's golden hair. He shook his head. "I can't see anything, little frog."

She tilted her head to look up at him, all eyes and forehead and too-wide mouth, and frowned, shoving at his shoulder. "Tybalt. You're not looking hard enough."

They sat just a little too close to the fire for comfort, the heat as dry and baking as leaning over an oven, but Julia was such a skinny little thing she grew cold easily, and so he did not suggest they move away; instead he leaned forward, ignoring the discomfort. A salamander, a spirit of fire—there, was that a sleek tail, a narrow fiery head? He blinked. There was only flame again, and Nurse was calling to them to come inside.

He dreamed that night of fire, but the flames were cool and did not consume him, but only licked at his skin tenderly, caressing, as if he were the salamander himself, untouchable and wise, and nothing could hurt him.

* * *

When Tybalt was twelve, his elder cousin Matio showed him how to lick his fingers and pinch out a candle flame, a brief impression of heat that was not quite pain.

On winter evenings, he roasted chestnuts with Julia, plucking them from the pan bare-handed to drop into a bowl to cool, swift enough that he hardly ever burned himself.

He was never afraid of the fire: if he remained quick and sure, it would not burn him. He made a game of it, trailing his hand through the flames of the brazier that burned in the main hall, the brazier that had always burned as long as there had been a Capulet house. The fire only kissed his fingertips, harmless.

* * *

"Swear to me you will avenge him." His aunt Capulet's voice was low, her grip on his hands painfully tight; the heat from the brazier was almost intolerable, the flame so close that Tybalt could feel the fine hairs on his forearms crisp away into nothing, faint pinpricks that vanished as soon as he felt them. "Swear it," she hissed, her eyes wild; her hair had come tumbling down from its usual perfect arrangement, liquid gold in the firelight, and she was so beautiful and so terrible it hurt to look at her, in a way Tybalt knew he must never admit. "Swear it on the fire, my brother's son, my sweet nephew, my Tybalt." Her nails dug scarlet half-moons into his wrists, little stabs of pain he scarcely noticed in the overwhelming heat.

"I swear it," he said at last, and she released him. There were tears on her cheeks, glimmering like mercury. He stumbled away, the cool air against his skin at last a blessed relief.

* * *

Sometimes, lying limp and sweating in his bed after a fit, too weak to even snarl at the servants when they came to bathe him and comb his hair and change the sheets, Tybalt thought of the mad French girl Giovanna and her holy war; of Saint Birgitta and her visions. 

But he saw no angels in his fits, no Blessed Virgin or Christ Child, only fire and light, and once the wavering face of his father, frowning at him. He was no saint, beset by angels or devils; only a man, beset by his own body. The fire could not burn away everything he hated, leaving behind only a holy martyr. What good was it?

Tybalt closed his eyes and turned his face away, seeking the darkness, and slept.

* * *

Dancers swirled through the ballroom in brightly colored gowns and coats, jugglers and players roaming among them with stilts and wands of fire; it should have been a joyous occasion, but there was a frantic edge to all the gaiety, a sense of dancing on the edge of the abyss. Paris watched Julia with the smug satisfaction of a man eyeing a fine horse he meant to buy and Tybalt wanted to hit him, to smash his first into that smirking face and shove him to the door, never to return. No one should dare to look at Julia like that, least of all the future husband she was still too young for; her family ought to protect her from men like Paris, not sell her to him for a purse of gold and a fine title.

 _My daughter, a countess,_ his aunt had said earlier, smiling and gay, her wine-cup trembling in her hand where she gripped it too tightly. _She will be so happy!_ She had not looked at her husband, and Tybalt had bitten his cheek until it bled and kept his silence.

But Paris, smooth snake-sleek Paris, was the Prince's nephew, and his suit had Lord Capulet's blessing; so Tybalt had to content himself with growling and snapping like a leashed dog. Always a leashed dog with a Capulet collar, choked by his chain; there was nothing else for him, no marriage, no future beyond the city walls, no peace even in his own mind.

He waved away a servant with a pitcher of wine— _that_ was a lesson he had learned too hard many years ago—and one of his braver girl-cousins, seeking a dancing partner. He was in no humor for dancing tonight, not when Paris claimed every other dance with Julia, and Julia herself kept slipping away into the crowd to dance with masked strangers whose eyes lingered on the expanse of pale skin exposed by her too-daring bodice.

And then there was that one boy—Mercutio’s friend, already a count against him, for Mercutio’s taste in friends was far lower than his birth deserved—and something unpleasantly familiar in his tousled hair and pup’s exuberance, something suspiciously persistent in how often he caught up Julia’s hand in the dance.

Tybalt smiled, faint and humorless, searching the crowd for a flash of blue, the scarlet of Julia’s gown; if his uncle would not protect Julia as he ought, that right fell to him. At least the ball had abruptly ceased to be dull.

He no longer noticed the brief heat when he trailed his fingers through the fringes of torches as he passed; it was only long habit, as meaningless as everything else in Verona, everything except Julia.

* * *

Later, he awoke in a darkened room from fevered dreams he could not remember, his sword hand throbbing. When he unwrapped the clumsy bandage he found blistered skin, scorched and raw; it twinged with a sharp, biting pain when he flexed his fingers.

He could not recall how he burned himself, but he knew his purpose now.


End file.
